There are many ways to conceptualize the human being, but if we talk about his nature in harmony with the environment and to what extent he is free/responsible for his destiny, there are essentially two visions in this regard, treated by Thomas Sowell in his book Conflict of visions.
These visions are the Restricted and the unrestricted, which we will see below.
Factory defects or system failures
In the restricted vision It is proposed that human beings have immutable, serial, factory defects, and that these defects include intellect and moral character. Once that premise is accepted, we must place our trust in proven and reliable systems (science, market, institutions, etc.). This vision, with all its variants, is supported by thinkers such as Hobbes, Smith, Burke, Malthus or Hamilton.
In the unrestricted vision It is established that human beings are born good by nature, and that the defects we observe are the result of failures of the system or social institutions. This vision, with all its variants, is supported by thinkers such as Voltaire, Rousseau, Paine or Veblen.
To delve deeper into these two visions (probably neither of the two positions is true, or it is not true at all times or circumstances, but rather we must swing between one extreme and the other), I recommend Sowell's book., Conflict of visions. According to Sowell, these visions are at the origin of the political struggles developed, first, in Europe and, later, throughout the world since the end of the 18th century: the vision that he calls "constrained" ("restricted", "conditioned", also meaning "tragic", "pessimistic") and the "unconstrained" vision ("unconstrained", "utopian", "optimistic").
You can also expand on these visions in the following video, where I speak about my beliefs, and where I lean much more towards the restricted vision:
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The news
Basically there are two visions of the nature of the human being: the restricted and the unrestricted.
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.